


Maybe I'm Stupid

by untokki



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Drabble, Fluff, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25660006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untokki/pseuds/untokki
Summary: The colors on Yamato's shoulders bloom like a splattered painting. The artist has no idea he was the one to paint his soulmate's skin in such a way.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Yamato | Tenzou
Comments: 4
Kudos: 85





	Maybe I'm Stupid

The branch below his foot just barely supported the man’s weight before it cracked and fell away from the tree. Luckily for him, though, a strong hand gripped around his wrist and pulled him up onto the next thick branch. Kakashi crouched beside him, his eye trained on the darkness of the forest while his hand slowly snaked away from Yamato’s arm. “What’s your plan?” Yamato asked in a hushed voice, following the older man’s gaze. With the cover of night, Yamato could barely make out the leaves rustling in the trees, let alone where the enemies could be hiding. Kakashi gave him a short glance before standing up. “I’m figuring that out,” he said. “Where’s Naruto and the others?”

“Still at camp. None of them woke up,” he replied. He honestly hadn’t expected any of them to wake up, considering their ears were quite as trained as Yamato and Kakashi’s. The rustling of leaves could have been any nocturnal animal, or even a midnight breeze, but the two jōnin knew better.

“You head back to camp, then. I think I can do this on my own.”

Yamato looked up at him, then stood up straight as well. “You really think that’s a good idea?”

Kakashi’s eye closed and his cheeks rose under his mask. He patted Yamato’s shoulder. “You don’t trust me?”

  
  


With Yamato on one side on Naruto and Kakashi on the other, the team made their way back through the gates of Konoha, not without the blond boy grinning widely at the two shinobi at the entrance. He tried to lift his arm up from around Yamato’s shoulder to give them a thumbs-up, but a pain struck him down before he had the chance. “Let’s get you to the hospital before you try to act all victorious,” Sakura called from behind the three, Sai smiling sheepishly beside her. Kakashi glanced over at Yamato and gave the man a knowing look while Naruto whined at the idea. Kakashi’s arm crossed over Yamato’s upon Naruto’s back to keep the boy up on his feet, leaving Yamato to let out a sigh at the idea of walking across the entire village to get the boy to the hospital.

“Do any of you need assistance?” the nurse asked after Naruto had retired to his hospital bed. His arms were both wrapped in bandages, as well as one of his knees, but other than that, the boy was left unscathed. Sai immediately asked the nurse about a burn he had received on his arm, leaving her and Sakura to look over the injury. Kakashi took the moment to bump shoulders with Yamato. “Lady Tsunade said we get to have a little break,” he told him, having gone to give the report as they set Naruto up in the hospital. “How are you going to spend that?”

“Rest and relaxation,” Yamato smiled, letting out a breath. “Maybe do some reading.”

“Reading, huh? Want any recommendations?”

“From you? Definitely not.”

Kakashi shrugged his shoulders, his hands in his pockets. “I don’t only read raunchy stuff, you know.”

Yamato looked up at him with a raised eyebrow, as if asking for him to continue. It was then that the elder jutted his head towards the door, signalling for them to leave the hospital room. 

The clouds in the perfect blue sky moved slowly along, untouched white puffs that signalled wonderful weather for the next coming days. The balcony of Kakashi’s apartment was small, but just big enough for both of them to sit on opposite railings without fear of falling off. The books Kakashi had offered to him were mostly romance, but at the very least, they weren’t the same genre as Jiraiya’s “masterpieces”. One of them was a poetry collection, and that was the one Yamato opted to read, while Kakashi enjoyed Make Out Tactics for what seemed to be the hundredth time. Yamato’s finger creased the very edge of the page, lost in thought rather than actually absorbing any of the words. He stared at the sliver of skin that showed beneath his sleeve, a small splash of yellow sticking out from the fabric. He turned his attention away, back to the text, and refused to acknowledge it.

The marks were definitely getting harder to acknowledge, considering the blossoming of colors on his shoulder that seemed to overlap each other more and more every day.

“Kakashi,” Yamato said, having to clear his throat after saying the name. Suddenly, his mouth was dry.

“What is it?” Kakashi replied, flipping to the next page rather than looking at the younger man.

“What do you think of the whole soulmate thing?”

When the other didn’t reply, Yamato assumed he just didn’t want to talk about it. 

“I don’t think it’s actually real. I’ve never seen anyone with marks like that,” he replied finally.

Yamato’s eyebrows furrowed, and he rubbed his chin, still covered. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen other people with the marks either. Surely more people than just Yamato had met their soulmates in Konoha, right? “You haven’t?”

“Why? Have you?”

He laughed under his breath, and decided to bite the bullet at that moment. He pushed up his sleeve and showed his forearm to the other man, showcasing a yellow handprint wrapping around his skin. Kakashi’s eye widened at the sight and he let out a little laugh. “Oh. That’s what they mean, huh?”

“The marks show up where your soulmate touches you,” Yamato explained, finding it strange that Kakashi hadn’t known that. 

The silver-haired man stared at the mark for a moment more before turning back to his book like nothing had happened. “Guess I never really paid attention.”

“Do you really not have any marks on your body?”

“Nothing _that_ big.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Kakashi sighed and closed his book, setting it beside him on the railing. He took off one of his fingerless gloves and raised his hand to Yamato, showing what seemed to be a brown fingerprint on his palm. It almost looked like it was the size of a child’s finger. “Thought it was like a birthmark or something. Which I know doesn’t make sense, since it showed up when I was sixteen.”

Yamato wondered if it was right to show him the rest. Then, he thought, “To hell with it” and began taking off his shirt.

“Wh-o-a there, buddy,” Kakashi put up both of his hands as if he was defending himself from the sudden exposure of skin. But, when he saw Yamato’s torso, and his shoulders and arms, his hands dropped to his sides. On both of Yamato’s shoulders were handprints much like the one on his forearm, but they clearly overlapped, signalling he had been touched there repeatedly by his soulmates. They ranged in color, from the yellow on his arm to a brown matching Kakashi’s, blue, red and green. With his chin uncovered, a mark along the bottom was shown, like someone had held his face there. His arms were littered in handprints, as well. He turned to show a couple overlapping ones on his back, but none were as extreme as the patches on his shoulders. Yamato still had his back to him when Kakashi began laughing. The younger man was sure his face was red because of the sound, so he quickly slipped his shirt back on. “Your soulmate sure is touchy.”

He was zipping up his flak jacket when he replied, “Yeah, they are, aren’t they?”

  
  


_“Soulmate marks match the chakra nature of your soulmate. If you receive a red mark, for example, your soulmate is a fire user. If your soulmate possesses more than one chakra nature, then those colors will be present as well.”_

Yamato sighed and glanced up from his book, watching Sai across the table as he silently mouthed the words of his own book. He was sure the boy had read about soulmates in his attempt to learn about emotions, but something didn’t feel right about asking his subordinate about such a touchy subject. He turned his attention back to the novel in front of him and flipped to another chapter. 

_“Have you found yourself looking at a friend’s hand after giving them a high-five and finding no colors, from you or anyone else? That’s because only your soulmate can see your marks, and vice versa. Don’t feel like a stranger for seeing the marks no one but one other person can see.”_

Ah. That made sense.

Yamato shut the book at the same time he shut his eyes. That made too much sense.

“Captain Yamato,” Sai’s voice took him out of his little stupor, “Are you alright?”

“Sai, have you read about soulmates?” he asked.

“A little bit. I had a strange mark show up on my arm one day, and when no one at the hospital could even see it, I assumed it had to be a soulmate mark.”

Yamato looked at Sai’s arm, where the young man had pushed up his sleeve and pointed to. Of course, Yamato saw nothing but his paper white skin. “So, do you know who your soulmate is?”

“Yes. That’s why I’ve been reading more of these books,” he answered, gesturing to the relationship advice books strewn across the table between them. “I don’t want to mess anything up.”

Yamato merely nodded and got up to return the book to its proper place.

  
  


Yamato let a wide grin show on his face as he approached Kakashi, placing a hand gently between his shoulder blades to show the man his presence. He then crossed his arms over his chest and stood beside him, watching as Naruto worked himself half to death with training. “I found another mark I forgot about,” Kakashi said out of the blue after a few minutes of silence.

“Oh yeah? Where is it?”

“On my thigh. A bit bigger than the other one. The color makes it look like a bruise, though, so I guess I always thought it was an injury.”

“Really? What color is it?”

“Like a healing bruise, you know? That greenish-brownish color.”

“You know, I read once that the color of your marks match your soulmate's chakra nature,” Yamato rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe your soulmate’s an earth user?”

“Who knows,” Kakashi sighed. He crossed his arms over his chest then, too. “You wanna make a bench, or something? I mean, unless you want to stand here for hours watching him.”

“Or, instead of watching Naruto, we could leave him be and enjoy ourselves instead?”

“My, my, Tenzo, are you asking me on a date?”

Yamato shook his head with a sly smile and wrapped his fingers around Kakashi’s wrist, pulling him away. “If that’s what you want to think it is.”

With their empty plates collected in the center of the table, and their shoes discarded at the restaurant’s genkan, Yamato listened silently as Kakashi explained to him the “wonderful” plotline of Jiraiya’s most recent novel. Yamato leaned his cheek on his hand and nodded his head when the conversation needed him to, preferring to listen to Kakashi talk, rather than to what he was actually talking about. Kakashi ate fast enough that Yamato still wasn’t able to catch a glimpse of what was under the mask, and while he knew the kids of their team would have been furious at missing the golden opportunity, he didn’t mind it. In the back of his head, though, he tried to shuffle through his memories in hopes that maybe, just maybe, he had touched Kakashi’s face one day in their pasts. He could remember so clearly being younger, while they were both in ANBU, and placing his small finger in Kakashi’s open hand as they laid awake at night. He wanted Kakashi to wrap his hand around his at that moment, but instead, Kakashi had rolled over in his sleeping bag. The one on the elder’s thigh came from another night, one where Yamato felt himself almost break, and his small fist curled up in the fabric of Kakashi’s uniform. All it took was Kakashi’s hand on his shoulder to ground him, and after that Yamato never touched him again.

But now he was emboldened.

Yamato stretched his legs out beneath the table, and stretched his arms back in the same motion. Gently, he bumped his foot against Kakashi’s shin, and let out a soft apology before he called for the bill.

  
  


After Tsunade announced their small vacation was over, Yamato found himself on Kakashi’s balcony once again, finishing the week like it had begun. While he had one of his own books to look through, reading up on some woodworking techniques that had grabbed his interest, Kakashi stared up at the clear blue sky. The younger couldn’t help himself from stealing glances his way, his mind running circles around the idea of Kakashi seeing all those new marks on his skin. When Kakashi sighed heavily, Yamato’s fingers curled tightly around the pages of his book. “Maybe I’m stupid,” Kakashi started, “Or just completely blind. But do I really touch your shoulders that much?”

“Huh?” Yamato looked directly at him then, eyes wider than normal at Kakashi’s words. He didn’t expect that.

“The marks. Only your soulmate can see the marks, according to Sai. He told me you were wondering about that.”

Yamato let out a laugh, but it sounded more like he was letting out an exasperated breath. “He really doesn’t know how to keep anything to himself, does he?”

“So those new marks, you touched me on purpose, right?” Kakashi asked, rather than acknowledging Yamato’s rhetoric.

“Yeah. I wanted to see how long it would take you to notice.”

“I wanted to beat myself up for not knowing earlier.”

The brunet smiled gently and got down from the balcony railing, walking across the small platform to stand right in front of Kakashi. With the older man still sitting on the rail, their difference in height was even more noticeable. “I want to see how quickly the marks appear,” Yamato said softly. He picked Kakashi’s hand up out of his lap and slipped his glove off, then simply interlocked their fingers. When he pulled his hand away, the little brown mark he had left as a teenager was completely covered by a blue handprint, just as Yamato’s was covered with a yellow one. 

“That’ll make sex very interesting,” Kakashi offered after a moment of silence.

“You’re insufferable,” Yamato muttered, letting his head fall forward onto Kakashi’s shoulder. The gesture only made the older man chuckle, and he rested his hand gently on the middle of Yamato’s back.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed!! quarantine forced me to get back into naruto, and now i'm back on the writing grind. i'd love to see what you guys think of this.  
> you can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/gothjeritza), if you'd like! or, leave me a prompt on [curiouscat](http://curiouscat.me/yamakaka)!


End file.
